Volunteerism in Singapore

Proposal

3.16 Investigate volunteer trends in Singapore

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1 Existing volunteer trends in Singapore
1.1 Profile of existing volunteers
2 Case study of NVPC
2.1 Existing volunteer management practices in NVPC
2.1.1 Why it is successful
3 Critique of volunteer management practices
3.1 Lack of Commitment
3.2 Working adults are the lowest number of volunteers despite being possibly largest pool of skilled volunteers
3.3 Retirees are unable to volunteer
4 Recommendations to improve on current practices

1 Existing volunteer trends in Singapore
Our project seeks to identify overarching volunteerism trends, to predict and analyse the strategies used by organisations to retain volunteers. We want to see how this correlates with the behaviour of volunteers in Singapore, to encourage greater effectiveness in retaining volunteers. To do this, we will be looking at a case study of the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation. NVPC heads SG Cares, a sprawling volunteer portal which registers more than 27,000 volunteers taking part in 1898 activities, working towards a massive variety of causes. As the most prominent authority on volunteerism in Singapore, NVPC provides a robust management structure that our group would like to analyse and further improve on.
1.1 Profile of existing volunteers
1.1.1 Informal volunteers
The total number of volunteer hours in 2012 accumulated to 91 million, averaging 72 hours per volunteer. Unfortunately, this was a fall from the 104 hours per volunteer in 2010. This can be attributed to the growth of informal volunteers over the two elapsed years. While the number of informal volunteers increased to 73%, each only averaged 17 hours per person. The trend is thus that Singaporeans are growing open to volunteerism – but only on an occasional and non-committal basis.

1.1.2 Profile of formal volunteers

Recent Trends Regarding Gender, Ethnicity and Age
In 31 January 2013, NVPC recorded its highest rate of volunteerism – 1 in 3 persons volunteered. Formally registered volunteers increased across most demographic groups. The largest number of volunteers were females and Malays. There was also a significant increase for age group 35 to 44 years old. Singapore’s Red Cross Secretary General Benjamin Williams suggested that stable establishment in their careers might have prompted older working adults to volunteer more.

Volunteerism in Industries
Volunteerism grew in local private sectors and multinational corporations from 22% to 28% in 2010 to 2012. In the same span, there were six times as many corporations approaching NVPC to structure volunteer programmes, according to NVPC’s Deputy Director of Marketing and Communications, Eugene Lim. The top three types of volunteer work were befriending and mentoring, general services such as cooking, cleaning and lastly, fundraising.

Frequency of Volunteers
The percentage of those who volunteered weekly and monthly fell where 7 out of 10 are occasional volunteers without weekly or monthly commitments. Yet the percentage of occasional volunteers increased dramatically from 55% to 73%. Looking ahead, 4 in 5 volunteers are willing to volunteer again. The main reasons impeding them from regularly volunteering are the lack of time, being tired out and physical disabilities.

2 Case study of NVPC

2.1 Existing volunteer management practices in NVPC

NVPC adopts a 4-stage volunteer management process – the concept stage, planning stage, implementation stage and finally the review stage. This model can be adopted for volunteer management in other organisations, regardless of scale.

Concept Stage

In the concept stage, volunteers define the vision, mission and the goals of their project. It addresses the needs and the required budget for volunteer involvement.

Planning Stage

The planning stage involves policy-making, clear description of the volunteer involvement, record keeping of volunteer’s information and risk management. This crucial as without a proper plan, recruitment of the volunteers in the implementation stage will be hampered.

Implementation Stage

Usually recruitment for the volunteers happens through a screening process where individuals with the best volunteering mindset are selected. This is followed by the orientation and training for the volunteers to get them on board. It ends off with recognition activities for the volunteers to keep their morale high. In addition, marketing is done to attract managers for the volunteer groups. Marketing is currently centred at targeting Gen Y individuals. Gen Y people are much more tech savvy and hence creating awareness among them would yield more candidates to join volunteer programmes.

Review Stage

In the review stage, performances of the volunteers are reviewed. In addition, reasons for exit of the volunteers are evaluated to increase retention. The impact of the volunteer program is also assessed in its effectiveness.

VWOs in Singapore mostly follow a similar process of conceptualization, planning and then recruiting volunteers, but this particular model is effective especially due to detailed adjustments NVPC has made, which cater to volunteer needs.
2.1.1 Why it is successful

The screening stage of volunteer management is particularly effective. It has been fine-tuned to pick out the volunteers with the right mindset. Through screening, volunteers are matched with the causes they are most suited to and passionate about. This naturally translates into greater retention of volunteers. Furthermore, the exclusivity of being “selected” contributes to a sense of purpose in the volunteers. NVPC also places great priority on volunteer coordination. The Volunteer Coordinator programme is a pilot involving ten grantees, to fund the salaries of staffs who coordinate volunteers and study whether using these dedicated volunteer coordinators would improve volunteer management. They made the biggest improvements in the planning and implementation stages of volunteer management, such as use of standard operating procedures, job descriptions to match the volunteer needs. In addition, there was less adhocracy across departments; leading to ease of hiring and implementing volunteers and volunteering practices in Singapore.
2.1.1 Practice being adopted by private groups

This practice has been similarly adopted to great success in smaller-scale volunteer organisations. For example, interviews are conducted by international volunteer group like AISEEC. The screening process is to validate that the candidate has the passion and drive to do the volunteer activities. This is to screen out candidates who are not passionate for the tasks thereby leading to better suited candidates for volunteer programs.

3 Critique of volunteer management practices
Understanding what volunteers look for when volunteering, and catering to those aspects can help in volunteer retention. With different characteristics, motivations, and issues they face, we can categorise the volunteers into 3 different groups, namely the Students, Working Adults, and Seniors. Each group face a different problem with regard to volunteering.
3.1 Lack of Commitment
Born in the era where the Internet is widespread, and being IT savvy is the norm, Students are well educated and learned. Being young and quite inexperienced, they require guidance, and the flexibility of time for their studies. Having gone through Community Involvement Projects(CIP) in school, students that continue volunteering outside of CIP want to gain exposure to working in different organisations. They would volunteer together with friends, while also looking out for like-minded people to befriend. Motivation is attained through teamwork, and being a part of something bigger. This has helped to push students that are 15-19 to have high volunteer participation rate as evidenced in the Individual Giving Survey 2012.

However, after the initial spike of interest, their willingness drops rapidly. This could be due to the spirit of volunteerism not being cultivated organically in them. As they juggle studies with CCA, volunteering turns into a time consuming activity, or something that is temporal. Having great difficulty in committing to long term volunteering, motivation is lost.

3.2 Working adults are the lowest number of volunteers despite being possibly the largest pool of skilled volunteers
Working adults remain the most difficult pool of volunteers to woo. Recently graduating from school and starting work, the young adults face problems of a change of lifestyle, requiring them to put in much more time into their working life. For older working adults, they have to divide their time between family and work, compounded with a lack of corporate support for volunteerism, this results in low volunteer participation rates. Their motivation from being passionate about causes, and increasing financial independence allows working adults to create the change that they want to see.
3.3 Retirees feel unable to volunteer
Senior volunteers show strong resilience, having ability, putting in effort for the organisation that they volunteer for. Their motivation comes from wanting to have close relationships with staff and beneficiaries, gaining a sense of belonging to the community. The seniors’ emotional attachment to their beneficiaries helps to fuel their spirit of volunteerism.
However, they face problems such as deteriorating health, a lack of strength, as well as familial duties, causing them to think twice before volunteering as they get older.

4 Recommendations to improve on current practices
4.1 Incentives to turn occasional volunteers into long-term volunteers
The majority of Singaporeans prefer to volunteer occasionally rather than on a long term basis. A staggering 70% of Singaporeans volunteer only occasionally. From the large numbers of people interested in volunteering, we can slowly work to translate this 70% into long-term volunteers. Perhaps, incentives such as social activities, recognition through award ceremonies and awarding study grants or bursaries to volunteers can help incentivize the younger generation to continue volunteering after their one-off encounter.

4.2 Approach companies to integrate volunteerism into their CSR

Many companies are interested in doing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of their sustainability plans. We recommend that NVPC leverage on this to garner manpower for volunteer projects. One of the key problems with retaining working adults is that despite the financial independence, they lack the time and energy to volunteer in their limited free periods. If companies agree to help VWOs by dedicating part of their working hours to community work – such as a “service week” or a “monthly service day”, working adults may be more inclined to volunteer regularly. It would also serve as a break from the mundane cycle of corporate life. It would also boost the image of the company as a sustainable and socially responsible business.

4.3 Encourage active ageing through volunteerism
One way to engage the older population is by partnering with agencies such as C3A, the Council for Third Age, which aims to encourage active ageing through community activities. Given that Singapore is a rapidly ageing population, our elderly residents will soon make up a statistically significant proportion of our total population. Partnering with the C3A to organize volunteering activities would help our elderly citizens spend their golden years meaningfully and at no cost. It would also create a positive synergy where our elders remain a valuable resource to society.